The Last Whisper in the Dark: A Novel

by Piccirilli, Tom

  We begged off and he led us into a living room where a man about my father’s age stood in the center of the room, arms at his sides like he was on guard duty, just waiting for my mother to walk in.

  He dyed out the gray streak the same way she did. He had reddish-brown hair like her as well.

  “Ellie,” he said.

  “Hello, Will.”

  She moved to him and gave him a brief awkward clench that soon became a genuinely emotional embrace. I was surprised, and a bit jealous, by its intensity.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said.

  “And you look heal); } @font-face { font-family: "Charis"; font-style: italicre couple of thy. You’re trim, you’ve lost all your baby fat.”

  “A long time ago. My wife Stephanie was a nutritionist. She taught Mom how to cook meals without all the fat and heavy carbs. Now we eat plenty of legumes, fruit, and nuts for good blood glycemic numbers and HDL levels.”

  I had no idea what a blood glycemic number or HDL level was, or if mine were any good, but I tried my best to appear as if they were. My mother opened her hand and motioned to me. “This is my son Terry.”

  Will raised his chin and went deep into my eyes. He was a man of quick assessments, who judged others instantly on how they presented themselves, how strong their handshake was, how expensive their cologne. I was glad I was wearing Grey’s. Will gave my hand one hard squeeze and pump, then didn’t let go. “Hello, Terry, it’s nice to finally meet you. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.”

  “I suppose I am too.”

  I tried to say something more but there wasn’t anything more. He brought his other hand over and clasped mine in both of his. He smiled and in his smile I saw that he was at as much of a loss as I was. I broke our clutch. He had years to catch up on with his sister and nothing at all to cover with me.

  My mother and her brother drew off to one corner of the room and chatted quietly about their father’s fading health. He put his arm around her shoulder and brought her in close and gave her a brisk but honest kiss on the cheek, and she fell in close to him. I wondered where my grandmother was. I wondered which bedroom my grandfather was dying in.

  John said, “I’ll show you my studio.”

  “Studio?”

  “My cutting room. I’m a filmmaker too.”

  He led me through the house. I got a sense that the place was usually filled with servants or nurses. I could feel the empty spaces where they usually clustered. John stopped off in the kitchen and drew two bottles of imported beer out of the fridge. It wasn’t even ten A.M. yet. He handed me one. I waved him off. I had to start worrying about killing brain cells and blood glycemic numbers and brain elasticity. We traveled through a series of corridors that made me think of the Rand house with its hidden panels and fold-up ladders. I imagined the walls snapping open to reveal secret private movie theaters and game rooms.

  “You live here?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re, what, thirty-five? And you still live at home?”

  “I’m thirty-two. You’re not all that much younger than I am and you live at home.”

  “Yeah, but I’m fucked,” I said. “Are you?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  His cutting room was an office with nearly every inch filled with something to do with movies. Shelves packed with DVDs, walls covered with one-sheet action movie posters, some signed. Golden age of Hollywood memorabilia. Framed photos of film noir, original film reels. Computer and stereo equipment. Boom mikes in the corner. Horror movie icon models, action figures, first-edition hardcover horror novels. I knew a lot of fences who would go in big for this sort of thing. I could rake in some dough. My instincts kicked in. I looked at the windows and checked what kind of alarm system was in place in a bikini and high heels."> l. It was out-of-date and wouldn’t be too difficult.

  Except we Rands had a rule that we didn’t steal from family. I wondered if it still applied in this case. Were the Crowes my family?

  John had an old-fashioned editing machine, the kind that ran actual film and clipped out frames. The floor was covered with sections of film and pieces of tape and piles of dust. The maids never got in here to clean. I imagined that they’d have strict orders to keep out.

  “What kind of movies do you shoot?” I asked.

  “Wistful ones,” he said. “Dreamy meditations on—” He sipped his beer. He let out an angry laugh. “—on who the Christ knows what. Artsy, surrealistic, experimental pieces of shit that pay homage to German expressionism and the French new wave. At least that’s what every talentless, pretentious fucker says. And documentaries, like I said. Everyone with a camera thinks he can make a documentary. It’s because of reality television. Reality TV lets us all think we can be stars either in front or behind the lens. All you have to do is be self-important, belligerent, promiscuous, or willing to heave yourself off a garage or in front of a car, and you’ll be popular. You’ll go viral. You watch a lot of TV?”

  “No.”

  “Good, that crap will rot your brain worse than crank.” John leaned back against the wall between two posters: The Hills Have Eyes and The Maltese Falcon. He was bookended by Bogie and a bald mutant cannibal wearing a necklace of bones. John raised his bottle like he was toasting me. “My dad and granddad are both very successful producers.”

  “Why don’t they live in Los Angeles?”

  “Granddad was out there for a few years when he was a young man, but he hated it, so he moved back here to New York for the television market. My father has a place out there in the hills, spends a few weeks or a few months at a clip getting studio projects off the ground.”

  “Must be a nice in for you.”

  “No. Neither one of them ever helped me much. They mostly hate what I do.”

  I thought, Here it is. Here’s the setup, here’s the scam. It’s got something to do with his old man. It always has something to do with your old man.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be. I’ve got other interests. I’m into making my documentaries. Don’t ask me what subjects. A variety of them. I have a touch of OCD, I think. I’ve never been diagnosed, clinically I mean, but my obsessions seem to get the best of me. I follow them up. I have a lot of them. But then most people do, I guess, whether they admit to them or not.”

  I wasn’t going to ask him what subjects.

  “I’ve shot some horror films … atmospheric ghost stories,” John said.

  He seemed to be waiting for a response to that. “Okay.”

  “Some of it was artsy, very Asian, very European. A way to honor the human character, show it in all its flawed beauty. Passionate, erotic, lush, vivid, striking, angry, bitter, vicious, even ugly. But real. Other stuff, not so arty. More primal, you know. Bloody, gory, hot, sweaty, scary.”

  “I get you. the only one I had leftndor ”

  “You probably don’t approve.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because of Collie.”

  He was right. I didn’t approve. I imagined lush, vivid, angry, vicious, ugly, real, bloody, gory, sweaty horror films and thought of my brother’s butchery. I’d lived through it, I didn’t need to see it on film. I’d already seen it on TV reports, at the time and then again with the upsurge of public interest right before his execution. I wanted to warn John off. I wanted to tell him not to make a documentary about my brother, not to use his story as the basis for some knife-kill flick. I looked at the bald mutant cannibal and the bald mutant cannibal looked back at me.

  “I’m thinking of doing a movie on Dale.”

  That shook me. “What?” A shiver ran through me and my chest tightened and my sternum ground together like my bad ribs. “What did you just say?” The rage was on me in an instant. I covered the ground between us in one bound, gripp#x201C;Stop sa

  “It’s pretty brilliant, isn’t it?” John said. “The guy who created it, some guy around my age, his name is Simon Ketch, he’s a multimillionaire alrea
dy. Can you believe it?”

  “It’s fake,” I said.

  “That’s what Ketch’s lawyers are always arguing, to handle any lawsuits, but who knows?”

  “I do.”

  I sat at John’s desk staring at his screen with my eyes starting to burn. It turned out that ROG was short for ROGUES, a new Web-based COPS-like show filmed from the point of view of petty criminals pulling minor acts of theft and vandalism. Most of the kids were boys wearing ski masks or handkerchiefs over their faces. Some street chicks showed up to watch the shenanigans and applaud the illegal efforts. It was all filmed with handheld cameras chasing after the punks while they kicked in doors, busted windows, and ran through houses sticking things like DVD players into sacks and pulling cheap jewelry out of dresser drawers. Third-rate home invasion antics. The kids laughed their asses off the whole time. It wasn’t about money, it was all about the mischief.

  Except in Dale’s case. She was the face of the show. She wore heavy black and red makeup, sexified but almost clownish, with her hair styled in a wild shag almost the same as Darla’s. She was skinned into tight leather clothes I’d never seen her wear before. It was a hell of a getup, a real semislick disguise. Most people who knew her wouldn’t be able to recognize her, but she couldn’t fool me.

  She introduced the segments and interviewed the punks under their street names of “Lick 87,” “Morgue Baby,” and “Godless Kid.” She never said her name but she smiled into the lens, looking beautiful, vivid, and wild, like she was heading out to an underground club. She ran along with the cameramen like an investigative reporter. She had a quiet demeanor as if she took all of this very seriously, as if she had exclusives to breaking news that would soon be on all the network stations.

  The B&Es seemed staged to me. I knew the sound of real breaking glass, but when these punks put their gloved fists through the door or kitchen windows I didn’t buy it. I watched Lick 87 especially. He had the same basic size as Tony, the kid Dale was dating.

  “How do they make money on this?” I asked.

  “They sell downloads for a couple bucks a pop. The Web show is popular. Anything that’s popular can turn a profit somehow.”

  I nodded. “And the cops?”

  “It’s pretty small fry. I doubt the cops or feds are very interested. There’s tons of this kind of shit on the Internet. They can’t catch everyone. They can hardly catch anyone. It’s all anonymous.”

  I played some of the segments again. Sometimes these teen Rogues were inside a house for less than thirty seconds, doing Class-C acts of vandalism. Sometimes it was worse. They ran in an open back door, shot paintball guns at folks on a couch, kicked them around some, ripped off purses and wallets, and continued on out the front door while people yelled and children screamed. Maybe it was just stupid enough to be real, but what brand of new outlaw was this? And why would Dale be involved?

  There probably wasn’t a Simon Ketch at all. More likely a group of twentysomethings hiding behind the false persona, selling button-clicks of idiocy, fronted by a league of lawyers who just wanted to tie up the courts long enough to make a ton of cash and then split for some West Indies island that had no extradition with the U.S. It was a new age of grift that I just didn’t understand.

  “This kind of street crime and gags have been popular for a long time,” John said. “Backyard wrestling tapes, college girls going crazy on spring break. You remember when they’d pay homeless guys to slug it out in back alleys for ten or twenty bucks?”

  “Urban legend.”

  “Nah, you can bet it happened. And teens robbing houses on video has been done before. Ketch just gave it a Web address and some pretty packaging.”

  That was Dale, the pretty packaging.

  “How long has this been going on?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I found out about it a couple of weeks ago. It’s a pretty popular site and, well, like I said, I’m sort of obsessed with the Rands.”

  “Growing up in our shadow.”

  “Right.”

  “She’s sixteen.”

  He couldn’t settle on any single expression. He looked baffled, bemused, embarrassed. He didn’t fully get it. Probably not his fault. His eyes were bright and a little brash.

  She might be only the host of this moronic show, but it could only lead to worse things. I could spot the escalation in criminal acts just watching the highlights. If it was an act it would turn real soon. If it was real, it might become dangerous soon. People were bound to eventually get hurt. Lots of home owners kept guns around. A warning shot gone wrong might lead to big-time investigations, the feds, RICO.

  “How’d you learn about this?” I asked.

  “This is what I do. Part of what I do. I surf the Web finding the viral vids. Most of them are kittens playing piano and shit like that, but I find the darker stuff too. The crime stuff, the horror stuff. That’s what I’m drawn to.”

  “John, how did you know this was my sister? Her name is never mentioned. You can hardly see her face. You don’t know her at all. Why did you make the connection?”

  “That’s obvious,” he said.

  “Not to me.”

  “Well … because of the graveyard, ah …”

  “Ah?”

  “The graveyard … desecration.” I stared at him.

  I kept staring at him. “The what?”

  “I didn’t want to show you that vid, Terrier. That one, it’">“No, you didn’t.”tps not fake.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Show me now.”

  He held up his hands like I was a cop about to bust him. “Look, I thought you knew about all of this. I don’t want to be the one who—”

  “It’s okay.”

  I gave the charmer’s grin right back to him. I knew I was doing it right because I felt like I was the shill and he was my mark. I was the guy he could trust. I was the buddy. I was the inside man. I could talk him out of five grand or I could have him show me the video of a graveyard defilement.

  He clicked through a few Web pages and got to one that made him nervous. “You might not like this.”

  “Nah, don’t worry about it. Hey, John, you think you could go grab me a cup of coffee, man? I’m getting thirsty.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  He left the room and I punched the button.

  Teenagers always got a little weird and wired around cemeteries. They made out on top of graves, they played tag among the tombstones. It was a place to get drunk and laid and cause insubstantial trouble without anybody around to complain. They toyed with stupid ceremonial rites of witchcraft. They painted swastikas and pentagrams just for the hell of it. The more famous the corpse, the more midnight visitors showed up to get a look. Adolescents went nuts for local legends.

  The summer we turned fifteen Chub and I went looking for the crime scene where a teenage drug dealer from Oyster Bay called the Speed King had tortured and murdered his best friend in front of a group of onlookers. Over some minor infraction having to do with stolen amphetamines, the Speed King beat the kid, stabbed him, cut out his eyes, and eventually tossed gasoline on him and burned him to death. They left the mutilated corpse there and for more than a week the Speed King held tours and invited fellow classmates to come see what he’d done. Eventually word got out to the cops and the Speed King was arrested. Three days later he hanged himself in lockup. We found the spot where the murder occurred and drank a stolen pint of vodka toasting the dead or the living or our own impending adulthood.

  The Rogues, all three of them, carried high-powered flashlights through the cemetery. They’d waited for a full moon to shoot this segment of the show. I did the math. They’d been out there either two weeks ago or six. I didn’t think Collie’s headstone would’ve been ready six weeks ago, so I decided this is what Dale and her pals had been up to the middle of last month. While I had been watching Chub’s garage, my sister had been out doing this. I should’ve been aware.

  The digital audio recorder was extremely shar
p. Dale did her bit as a news correspondent. She laid it all out without any feeling at all. Not a hitch in her throant down? She n

  I opened the door and John stepped in, holding a sugar bowl with a small spoon in it.

  His smile was a little nervous and a little stupid. It was a happy smile. He was happy that I was there. I went deep into his face. I shoved my will into his mind. I was good at reading people but I’d made some bad mistakes in my time. I couldn’t afford another one. I looked at the man and I tried to know his heart and intent. I should be sensitive to schemers and killers by now, but in this case, I realized I might have been wrong. I’d wanted to hate him because he reminded me of Collie.

  He said, “You okay, Terry?”

  “Do me a favor and don’t mention this to my parents,” I told him.

  “Okay,” he said, “sure. No problem at all.”

  “And for Christ’s sake forget about filming anything with Dale.”

  “But—”

  “Just forget it, John.”

  He tried to hand me the sugar bowl but I didn’t take it. He set it on the cutting table beside the untouched cup of coffee and started flipping switches on some of his machinery. The faces of film noir villains glared at me from all angles. John plugged a mike into his computer and held it out to me, then sat back the only one I had leftndor like a talk show host. “You wouldn’t mind answering a few questions, though, would you?”

  He might’ve been running a game down on me, but I didn’t know what the rules were. I smiled again. “Perhaps another time, cousin John.”

  “Oh, right, Terry, yeah, that would be great.” He grinned. He had printed out sheets of notes all over his desk. I saw my sister’s face several times. The wild makeup made her appear even more like a harlequin. I looked into his dim, happy eyes and wondered again if he was trying to grift me. He seemed eager to help me. He wanted to be my family.

  “It’s almost time for lunch,” he said. “Gram’s been cooking all morning.”

  “Terrific.” I winked at him. I don’t think I’d ever winked at another person in my entire life.